There is only one kind of immunity and that is natural immunity which is achieved by battling the infectious diseases itself. Vaccination is merely the artificial triggering of temporary responses to manmade pathogens…

Both Wakefield and Adams seem to think that the relevant issue is what happens to survivors. Indeed, in some cases, natural immunity among survivors can be more robust that vaccine induced immunity. If faced with a second outbreak of the disease, those who got the disease the first time may have superior immunity to those who were vaccinated against it and therefore missed it entirely. That is supposed to “prove” the purported superiority of natural immunity.

But just like the question about burial is the red herring in the elementary school riddle, the focus on post disease immunity is a red herring in the quack claims. Highlighting the immune status of survivors deliberately misses the point. Vaccine immunity is superior to natural immunity because there are dramatically more survivors of the disease itself.

History offers many examples of this basic fact. Approximately one third of the Eurasian population (75-200 million) succumbed to the Black Death in the mid 1300’s. No doubt the survivors had robust immunity to the particular strain of Yersinia pestis that was circulating at the time. A vaccine against plague, had it existed, might have resulted in less robust immunity among survivors but there would have been tens of millions of more survivors.

More recently, the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 afflicted approximately 500 million people and killed 50-100 million of them. Perhaps the people who survived had more robust immunity to the particular strain of influenza thereafter than a vaccine, had it existed, would have provided. But if a vaccine had existed, a substantial proportion of the 50-100 million who died would have survived.

Our experience with vaccinations makes the point even more dramatically.

Consider this CDC chart created in the early years of the anti-vax movement:

The results are extraordinary:

Vaccine immunity led to the extinction of smallpox, a feat that natural immunity never even approached.

Cases of such “mild” childhood diseases as pertussis dropped from more than 147,000 per year to less than 7,000. Annual measles cases dropped from more than 503,000 to less than 100. Diphtheria, polio and congenital rubella nearly disappeared. And if you don’t get the diseases, you can’t die from the diseases, can’t be rendered paralyzed, blind or deaf by the diseases.

The difference between vaccine immunity is the difference between prevention and treatment … and prevention is always superior.

Insisting that the purported superiority of natural immunity among survivors means that vaccines are unnecessary makes as much sense as insisting that diet and exercise are unnecessary to prevent heart disease because most survivors won’t go on to have a second heart attack. You have to survive the first attack for any concerns about a second heart attack to be relevant. Similarly, you have to survive pertussis, measles, polio, diphtheria or smallpox in order for your immune status thereafter to be relevant.

There is no question that vaccine immunity is superior because vaccine immunity saves millions of lives that cannot be saved by natural immunity. And that would be obvious if anti-vax quacks and charlatans weren’t so effective at distracting lay people with red herrings like the immune status of survivors.

There is an interesting book that has a detailed chapter about the smallpox epidemics in 18th century Boston and Cotton Mather’s efforts to at getting the public and the medical community of the time to try inoculation ( he got a Molotov cocktail thrown into his house for his efforts. but in the next epidemic people noticed that the people who had volunteered for his inoculation experiment did not get sick or if they did it was much milder…):

Medicine and the American Revolution: How Diseases and Their Treatments Affected the Colonial Army

Side note – Cotton Mather learned about the practice of inoculation from his African slave, Onesimus who had a smallpox inoculation scar on his arm and who explained how it was done in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Roadstergal

I will pick that book up! It’s a particular interest of mine. It’s a very, _very_ recent thing that more troops in war are killed in combat than by infectious disease. :p

Variolation, the process of purposely inoculating a healthy person with smallpox… Often, they would take pus from someone who had a relatively mild course of the disease, thinking that it would give the recipient a mild case and then immunity. In reality, there was no way at the time to control the amount of virus given, and a mild case in person A could be ugly in person B. So the ‘success’ of variolation had more to do with giving the disease when the person was otherwise generally healthy, rather than the crapshoot of getting it at any time, and the person getting supportive care from the get-go rather than the delay to them being obviously symptomatic.

It was still a horrible, horrible process. The smallpox vaccine was a massive improvement.

The Bofa on the Sofa

While sabelmouse is nothing but a troll, you gotta love parachuters like nrbrk who come in and spew nothing but the same old anti-vax tropes and then leave to allow them to be demolished. As a vaccine supporter, it really looks good.

It’s kind of like a creationist dropping in and posting, “If humans come from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys around?” and then leaving.

You basically get to answer by writing the answer from the talkorigins FAQ, and you get to do with without any cross examination, so you don’t even break a sweat.

Roadstergal

“If humans come from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys around?”

I love that one. “If I descended from my grandparents, why are my cousins still alive? Checkmate, evolutionists!”

The Bofa on the Sofa

That’s why I used it as an example. Not only is it a standard creationist trope, it’s a really dumb one as well.

Kind of like what nrbrk dropped here.

Heidi_storage

Sigh. I’m a pretty hardcore fundie, but I cringe when my church members bring up evolution. We had some girls babysitting the other day, and before they were leaving they picked up one of our dinosaurs (I think it was an ankylosaurus, or maybe parasaurophilus) and asked, “But this one didn’t really exist, right?” (My kids didn’t even hear her, but I gave them a quick rundown on dinosaurs just in case they had.)

Both in adults over 40. Both survived.
No cases for 50 years, two within 18 months.
Diptheria has a 5% mortality rate, and you die choking and suffocating.

Hopefully the drive to get all pregnant women DTP-aP boosters is going some way to get herd immunity in adults up a bit.

Who?

Somehow I doubt either is feeling stronger for the experience.

Gene

5%? I thought that was low and looked it up. It is up to 20% mortality in those older than 40 and younger than 5. Ugh!

MaineJen

Yikes. My grandma’s cousin, a healthy 20 year old, died of diphtheria while on vacation in the 1920s. Left home healthy, was stone dead a week later.

Few people alive today even know what this disease *is.* We don’t even know how good we have it…

Roadstergal

The BBC had a nice little episode last night on vaccines, that told the story of Jenner and cowpox (the story that made me want to be an immunologist).

They also covered the push to eradicate smallpox from the wild, and showed many videos of children and babies suffering from smallpox prior to that successful effort. Horrendous.

mabelcruet

There’s a horrible educational video on YouTube about rabies, I think one is from Russia and another is in English showing a patient from somewhere in Africa. It’s awful to watch-the Russian chap is being interviewed over the course of a few days about how he’s feeling and in the initial stages seems fairly rational and composed. We don’t have rabies in the UK, but only because there are very strict quarantine laws. Still, we get idiots trying to smuggle in pets from abroad from time to time.

3RD LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH AFTER HEART DISEASE AND CANCER—MEDICAL ERRORS

Considering that iatrogenic causes (doctor errors, toxic pharmaceuticals used as prescribed, and dirty hospitals) are the 3rd leading cause of death in America, shouldn’t somebody be enacting laws that protect Americans from doctors and the pharmaceutical industry?

And guess what, the more doctors and scientists figure out how to prevent death from sickness, the more “but the doctor made a mistake” will be what’s left over as a cause of death. Those people in the deaths records had to die of something or other after all.
Of course, if you broke it down by what disease’s treatment the mistake was made in, you’d still see that what you’re trying to paint as a problem here is a statistical artifact of lumping together the deaths during the treatment of heaps of different things.

Who?

Oh no need, we have people like you for that, for free, on the internet.

Have you no respect for the taxpayer dollar?

The Computer Ate My Nym

I’m just not sure what this nonsequitor has to do with anything. And the US does have laws protecting its citizens from pharma. Ever heard of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act? Supplements, now. The laws protecting US-Americans against Big Supplement are extremely weak. For example, the FDA has literally no right to stop a dangerous supplement from going to market and only limited right to stop dangerous supplements from staying on the market. It’s an $80 billion industry and has almost no safety checks on it whatsoever. Big Pharma is unlikely to kill you. Big Supplement…probably will.

Mike Stevens

1ST LEADING CAUSE OF SAVING LIVES – VACCINATION.

Please stay on topic nrbrk.

nrbrk

OUTBREAKS—A LESSON IN BIG PHARMA MEDIA RELATIONS

There’s never a major childhood disease outbreak. It’s the same number of children who would normally get these mild ailments.

What’s different is the media’s hysteria in reporting it—at the behest of big pharma, which includes all of the crooked legislators and governmental “health” agencies who are beholden to it. It’s all about vaccine sales and has nothing to do with public health.

In fact, they never track these stories beyond the outbreak. Because if they did, you would see that 100% of these affected children recover fine in a week or so. That’s the real story—the part of the story they always omit.

Now here’s real measles news you’ll never see in the mainstream media…

Because if they did, you would see that 100% of these affected children recover fine in a week or so.

latimes.com/local/california/la-me-measles-20150418-story.html

“California’s measles outbreak is over, but vaccine fight continues
About 1 in 5 who got the measles in California had to be hospitalized. One collapsed at home, was placed on a mechanical ventilator due to severe pneumonia and developed multiple organ injury. Another suffered acute respiratory distress syndrome and had to be treated with an experimental drug that required special approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

DaisyGrrl

From that article: “a single person with measles exposed 14 pregnant women and 98 infants, including 44 in the neonatal intensive care unit”

I can’t even. This right here is why people need to vaccinate. Imagine being one of the parents of these babies, the worry of dealing with a baby in NICU compounded by measles exposure. Ugh.

shay simmons

BUT that person helped them get NATURAL immunity so that’s totes ok, amirite?

Measles kills over 130,000 people annually. It’s not exactly mild. Before widespread vaccination, it killed around 2.6 million people per year, and we are nowhere near the 98% uptake rates we would need to truly eradicate the disease. But the more people are vaccinated, the less people die.

But according to heartless anti-vax morons, because her immune system was compromised, she didn’t deserve to live, right??

Otherwise she was healthy, and definitely NOT in a 3rd world country.

Yes, most deaths happen in underdeveloped nation, but where do you think most of the measles cases in the US get imported from???

Measles stricken countries are only a plane ride away.

sabelmouse

1 woman with a myriad of health issues who died in a way possibly vaguely connected to measles changes the fact of those 130000, that die because of other things.
pro vax logic!
and then you predictably mix up incidence and outcome. the outcome is determined by conditions, not incidence.
mot to mention vaccine caused infections.

momofone

You wouldn’t know logic if it slapped you in the face.

LaMont

So people whose conditions are imperfect don’t deserve protection from incidence of infection. Gotcha.

Roadstergal

It’s a tautology. Healthy people don’t die of VPDs because people who die of VPDs aren’t healthy.

LaMont

Like all those NICU babies who that Facebook nurse will inevitably sicken and kill. But since she’s just doing it via VPDs, it won’t count as “medical mistake” in such a way as to put the blame on modern medicine, it’ll just be a tragedy we have to accept.

Roadstergal

It’s so arbitrary. You could say that only unhealthy people die from car accidents, or tainted water, and advocate against seatbelts and municipal clean water.

The point is, fewer people die with vaccination than without, with practically no tradeoffs. Who cares where someone like sabelmouse arbitrarily defines ‘healthy’? I’m sure I could define ‘healthy’ to exclude him/her/it. Doesn’t matter.

LaMont

Well, yeah, my grandmother died in a car accident (the so far – knock on wood – only person in my family in recent memory to do so). But she was unconscious at the wheel at the time, likely because of her diabetes. Ergo, seatbelts are unnecessary for healthy people!

sabelmouse

wow! super stupid!

Charybdis

Oh, sabelmouse is one of those whose conditions are imperfect. Autoimmune disease, she claims.
Sabel, please provide reputable incidences of “vaccine-caused” infections…

LaMont

Well the autoimmune disease was caused by vaccines, because having someone to blame is easier than realizing that bad things sometimes happen *without* conspiratorial intervention by shadowy Big Pharma bad guys. Besides, vaccine injuries are rare while protection from vaccines is common, and everyone wants to be special! God, it’s like saying that the existence of latex allergies means that no one should ever try wearing a condom to protect against diseases – after all, most STDs aren’t that bad, and pregnancy for millions of women who don’t want babies isn’t nearly as big a deal as protecting the much smaller population who can’t tolerate latex!

Roadstergal

You know, if you’re currently pregnant, you can have sex without getting pregnant! It’s ‘natural immunity’ logic.

Charybdis

No you can’t! It will hurt the baby’s head!
(please say I don’t need to mention sarcasm….)

Roadstergal

Oh, man, you’re reminding me of an episode of Louie where Louis CK is at a party and meets the surrogate mom for a couple who has the whole ‘natural’ pregnancy and childbirth planned out… surrogate is scared of all of it, she comes back to Louis’s place, one thing leads to another, they have sex. Then she goes into labor and he takes her to the hospital.

The couple gets to the hospital and is incensed that he ruined ‘their’ perfect OOH childbirth, and especially the idea that he got come all over the kid’s head…

LaMont

Haha well at least that has the benefit of being *true*.

MaineJen

Not to mention that autoimmune disorders are strongly associated with HLA tissue type…which you are, you know…born with. As in, before you receive any vaccines.

Charybdis

There’s always the lambskin condoms, you know, the “natural” option instead of latex. But they aren’t as effective at preventing STD’s because they let viruses through.
And they aren’t vegan either. 🙁

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

If your body is so worthless and defective that it couldn’t withstand a mere vaccine, you might as well just die already.

sabelmouse

shows how much you know about things. or want to know, for propaganda purposes.

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

That’s not an answer. Why don’t you just die now? You’re so weak that couldn’t even handle a vaccination, so you’re obviously just going to die of something sooner or later. Isn’t it wasteful for you to continue to exist?

sabelmouse

how sweet.

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

Well, I’m just applying the same logic you apply to brown people. Why should anybody lift a finger to prevent either of you from dying?

sabelmouse

i am glad you discredit yourself for anyone who accidentally found their way to kafka’s castle.

it’s not, you’re just pretending it is [or comp challenged] for propaganda purposes.

Roadstergal

Not at all. If you consider the people killed by VPDs to be an acceptable minority of weaklings, there’s no reason not to consider your imaginary vaccine injury to be an acceptable tiny fraction of that minority.

To care about you, we have to care about those killed and harmed by VPDs. Which your stance forbids.

sabelmouse

such lack of logic/understanding.

MaineJen

“malnourished and otherwise compromised people in 3rd world countries, often despite being vaxxed.” are the ones dying of vaccine preventable diseases. You’re not denying that they die of measles, you’re just saying it’s not the measles’ fault because the people who died were malnourished and poor. Do…do you not see how awful that is?

sabelmouse

it isn’t. it’s the malnutrition’s. and essentially capitalism’s.
the very system that you work for.

MaineJen

Hear that, everybody? Measles is blameless for people dying of measles.

Roadstergal

I’ll have to remember that. You can kill people in the developing world with impunity, because they’re less resistant to death than folk in the developed world. Hit by a car, dosed with poison, infected with a disease – not the fault of anything but malnutrition. So for god’s sake, don’t give them vaccines or remove asbestos from their home or try to swerve out of the way to avoid hitting them. In sabelmouse’s world, that’s so un-worth doing, it should be actively avoided.

I think this is sabelmouse’s argument against efforts to bring clean water to the developing world. Malnourished people are less resistant to infections from tainted water, after all.

sabelmouse

how does it feel to pretend to be this stupid for money?

Roadstergal

It feels highly painful to follow your tortured logic to its conclusions, but nobody pays me a dime.

Charybdis

Oxygen thief.

shay simmons

Are you saying we should let people die of VPDs because there are other things out there that can kill them?

Who?

Says the person with the random auto immune condition believed to have kicked in after a vaccination.

sabelmouse

i guess few come to these sites from the outside world so youse are free to embarrass yourselves all you like.

Proponent

sabelmouse: “and then you predictably mix up incidence and outcome. the outcome is determined by conditions, not incidence.”

Hmmmm.. passed the ACME Logictron Detector 2001® over this one … needle didn’t move, not one iota.

Amazed

Perfectly describes you, save for the dying part. Really, I may stop talking to such inferior beings. Can’t stand a simple vaccine when everyone around me tolerated it just fine.

Every time I see ‘a myriad of,’ it sets my teeth on edge. Yes, I know it’s probably Sabel’s smallest sin, but come on. Myriad is an adjective, plethora is a noun.

kfunk937

Oddly enough, that’s one of the few passes I give Saba (as an ESL speaker). OTOH, considering that her milk tongue is presumably German, I’d expect her to string words together in a more logical (if lengthy) fashion, so there’s that: more evidence of cognitive than linguistic barriers.

I do find her “covert” rebroadcasting of anti-vax and anti-gmo derp curated from disqus onto twitter and instagram mildly amusing, though. Who does she imagine is her target audience, if not the already convertedchoir TrueBelievers™?

MaineJen

And they don’t count, right?

sabelmouse

what a weird reaction.
people die because of bad living conditions , often despite vaccines and YOU want to use them to flog vaccines rather than help improve living conditions.

MaineJen

No, I want them to have vaccines so they won’t get sick with vaccine preventable diseases.

Well, when you eliminate one cause of death, what’s left is *everything else*. And yes, I’d rather die at 75 from cancer or diabetes than at 10 from a preventable/treatable disease (which could have happened to me).

sabelmouse

i didn’t die from a childhood illness just like pretty much everybody at that time.
i was injured by the smallpox vaccine though and would rather not have spend my live with debilitating chronic conditions.

Roadstergal

If you were ‘injured’ by the smallpox vaccine, as you seem to need to believe, how much worse would the full-blown disease have messed you up?

Ah, sabelmouse, the one who’s happy to throw the ‘weak’ ones under the bus when it comes to VPDs, but who is still so weak it can’t even deal with a simulated infection.

If you didn’t have something to randomly glom onto and blame for your condition, might you have to accept that you’re not a perfectly healthy person? That you’re as flawed, if not more so, than the ‘compromised’ people you shrug off as not worth being protected by vaccination?

sabelmouse

you’re an idiot.

Roadstergal

I’m merely using your own logic to describe yourself. If those who die of VPDs are ‘compromised’ and not worth considering, as you say, how much more ‘compromised’ is someone who can’t tolerate the vaccine?

sabelmouse

no reading comp whatsoever. it’s amazing!

Jonathan Graham

…and yet you can’t actually point out the problem with her rendition of your logic. Funny that.

momofone

I guess when all you have to offer is name-calling, you have to use it.

Jonathan Graham

Isn’t this the point where they reach up and grab from their shelf of excuses something labeled “Aluminum” or “Thiomersal”? Except that smallpox doesn’t contain either of those.

You, uh, you have a little bit of survivorship bias showing. A lot bit, actually. See, you didn’t die of childhood illness, and neither did anyone else who didn’t die (yes, that is a tautology, shush everyone). Those who did die of childhood illnesses obviously aren’t here to tell us about it.

sabelmouse

how about all the others who didn’t die, creating that mortality close to zero statistic?

How close to zero are we talking? 1 in 1000 die of measles, which is 0.1%. Is that close to zero to you?

guest

I also have a debilitating chronic condition. Assume I agree with the logic that it was caused by a vaccine. I still prefer my chronic condition to being dead from a childhood illness that could have been prevented from a vaccine.

sabelmouse

except most likely your chances of dying where close to zero, depending on several factors.

MaineJen

You really are a piece of work, aren’t you? You *really* think vaccines kill more people than the measles? You can’t possibly be that dense.

Nick Sanders

She also claims she isn’t antivax, somehow.

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

Reducing vaccine-preventable diseases in the third world reduces the money, bed, and manpower load on their healthcare resources. Money that doesn’t have to be spent on measles can now be spent on sewerage, access to fresh water, clean food, etc. Just because they’re brown doesn’t mean they might as well just shut up and die quickly.

sabelmouse

lolollololol!

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

Is that your standard response when you’re shown to be ignorant and wrong?

sabelmouse

it’s my standard response to extreme stupidity/shillines.

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

You might want to do better, since you’ve failed to show any reason why vaccination wouldn’t help improve health in the developing world.

Roadstergal

And has it changed a single mind in your favor?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that lurkers have a chance to see that the emperor of your lunacy is utterly nude.

sabelmouse

lurkers, you think this hive of insanity gets a lot of those?!

Charybdis

Oh yes.
*waves to lurkers*

ILoveJellybeans

So which is it?
Do the Disqus threads about vaccines get no lurkers because its a hive of insanity?
Or are pharmaceutical companies paying people to post on them to encourage more people to vaccinate?
.
Theres no point in both.
.
If the Disqus vaccine threads got no lurkers and were only read by the same handful of people who have already made up their minds, it would be a waste of money for pharmaceutical companies paying people to troll it as it would have no effect on the number of people who vaccinate.

sabelmouse

i’m not talking about disqus threads but the kafkaesque hive mind that is bs med, skep and ob raptor.
i have to say , the ”poster/s” on these are so insane it’s hard to believe pharma would want it/them associated.
on the other hand, the name of the game is disruption at all cost and pharma is getting ever more desperate.
but i’ve never doubted that there are a few seriously fanatic actual provaxxers out there.
the handful, or fewer , posting here might well be it.

Who?

You need to get out more.

Azuran

Seing as ‘pharma’ also provides me with the test kit to diagnose parvo and the medications to treat parvo, I highly doubt they are getting desperate over anti-vaxxers and a possibly lower rate of vaccination.
They really make much more money treating the sick then preventing the disease.
You are actually helping them make more money.

Roadstergal

The biggest Pharma Shills are the anti-vaxxers.

Preventing HepB vs treating liver cancer? Way more money on the anti-vax side.

Preventing HPV vs treating cervical cancer? Way more money on the anti-vax side.
Preventing influenza infection? Lord, have you seen the cost of a single influenza hospitalization? Especially if you get pneumonia on top!

The antibiotics and hospitalization costs for infected chickenpox sores, the treatment for tetanus infection, the cost of a whooping cough hospitalization… man, that is not small potatoes. That’s Big Supplement level money.

kfunk937

Not to mention the Big Gubbmint costs associated with contact tracing, quarantine/isolation, post-exposure prophylaxis … necessary to control outbreaks. And in the case of measles, additional lucre poured into the Medical Mafia/Industrial Complex to deal with subsequent infections due to knocking out previously-acquired immunity and response to novel pathogens. Oh, and all costs associated with disabilty and death—lest we overlook BigKiddieCoffin.

ILoveJellybeans

I think the same thing about the comments on Natural News.

sabelmouse

i don’t really read those. is it like a hive mind irrationally, and ignorantly attacking anybody with a different view?
with 99.999999999% of comments showing lack of reading and general comp, and plain stupidity?
also, are those comments by a couple of commenters with a dozen nyms?

ILoveJellybeans

Yeah, that pretty much describes it.

sabelmouse

must check out but doubt that anything beats the hive.

ILoveJellybeans

You might agree with it though, so not find it as bad as the people who are critical of alternative medicine.
.
Some of the same names show up on Natural News, or maybe Green Med Info, or both, I know at least one has Disqus, that show up anywhere in the alternative medicine/vaccine discussions, so still the same level of trolling and rudeness that sometimes happens in all the other places. There are some rather “interesting” leaps of logic there though…

sabelmouse

it’s not about dis/agreeing, it’s about style of comment.
the hive ones are extraordinarily aggressive coupled with extraordinarily stupid.
and go in circles to a ridiculous degree. that’s why i call them kafkaesque.
most of the hive [i’m guessing a couple of people with many nims] blessedly don’t seem to post on other disqus fora.
probs wouldn’t get away with some of the stuff that they say.
i agree that there are a few ”anti” vaxxers that seem a little off, but nothing compared to pros.
and most aren’t ”anti” anyways. just A, or none.

Empress of the Iguana People

So when we argue with each other when you are not commenting, that’s just George, Alice, and I amusing ourselves? Bless your heart

Nick Sanders

You really seem to not understand what the “a-” prefix means. But I do love your paranoia about how we can’t possibly be several people who disagree with you, just a few people wasting all our time on multiple screen names.

momofone

Someone loves saying “hive mind.”

StephanieJR

I am rather fond of honey.

Melaniexxxx

and using sassy abbreviations like “comp” and “nymns” ahaha

Nick Sanders

The only fanatics here are you and nrbrk. Although I guess through the warped lens of a crazed mind, the rest of the world does look insane.

sabelmouse doesn’t mind people dying. He doesn’t mind if he is shown to be ignorant or wrong. He really doesn’t have anything of importance in his life, any achievement or passion, or he wouldn’t be here trolling. He doesn’t even believe the things he’s writing.
All he wants to do is tie up *our* mental resources arguing with him. He’s like a social version of a VPD.

Roadstergal

Most people who actually work to improve the living conditions of people in the developing world are capable of holding multiple thoughts in their heads at once, and working to, say, increase access to clean water in addition to vaccination, as well as many other issues critical to health on the ground.

It’s kind of like how I can both wear a bicycle helmet and brush my teeth, all in the same day!

Part of the calculus is that vaccines are little vials that only need to be given a few times, as opposed to clean water, which involves a multiplicity of logistical issues with the need to supply a fairly large volume every day/week. So vaccines can be implemented on the ground while you’re still working on the water issue.

As an example, the intensive vaccination campaign has eliminated smallpox from places in the world where clean water is still not implemented. I think it’s great that kids don’t have to suffer through smallpox, and it’s important to continue to work on a consistent supply of clean water. Sabelmouse thinks they should still have smallpox as well as tainted water.

(This post, like all posts in response to sabelmouse, are for the lurkers, since sabelmouse is singularly dense. In a neutron-star-sense.)

Mike Stevens

The eradication of polio from almost all “poor countries with dark skinned, starving children” (as Saba would say) in them is also proof of that point.

shay simmons

It may not be possible for you to do two things at once, sabel, but the rest of us manage.

Azuran

2 years ago, there was a whopping cough epidemic where I live, 2 babies died. And no, I don’t live in a 3rd world country, they were not malnourished and they were not otherwose comprimised.
Those disease can, and often do, kill perfectly healthy babies and children.

Uh, no, most of the dead are not vaccinated. And many of those deaths occurred in developed countries before widespread vaccination- do you really think our sanitation and nutrition has improved in the US that much since the 1980s? Of course not. What changed is vaccination.

sabelmouse

mortality was down post ww2, 50s/60s in western countries.
i ain’t talking incidence.

Of course there aren’t. I’m glad we’re in agreement here. Both WHO and CDC are independent agencies (the CDC is a US agency, the WHO is an international organization) whose sole job and purpose is to gather data about what makes us sick and/or die and then do something about it. The CDC is explicitly about diseases (Centers for Disease Control), though its mandate has grown to include other public health threats like gun violence. The WHO is broader in scope and focuses on all things that can kill people, including hunger/famine, disease, wars and displacement, etc. They’ve both got a whole lot of data that is available to people who request to see it, and they’ve both got very good reputations for honesty in their data.

Neither organization makes any money from vaccines, and the WHO actually loses money because it provides vaccines free to people in developing countries who can’t afford them. It requires a lot of evidence of efficacy for the WHO to take the time and money to do things like provide vaccinations for people whose villages cannot be reached except for, say, a 10 hour jeep ride followed by a 2 hour canoe trip up a river.

You just love trying to shift goalposts and refuse to answer questions, don’t you? We’ve all noticed. And you STILL haven’t provided any citations at all for your claims. Is it because you don’t have any?

Again, not an answer. I do not point this out for your benefit, because you seem beyond hope. I point this out for the benefit of anyone else reading this thread. I have provided citations and logical argumentation. You have provided insults and unevidenced insinuations. That’s all the anti-vax side ever has.

sabelmouse

there’s no ”anti” vax side.
anybody using that term discredits themselves.

Dr Kitty

There are people who accept that current vaccination is as good as we can offer at present, and that it is better than not vaccinating.

And then there are people like you, who want vaccinations that are 100% effective, with 0% risk and who are unwilling to accept anything less, even if vaccine preventable diseases objectively cause far more harm than vaccines.

What would you prefer to be called if you don’t want to be called antivax?

Because I think “idiots” is a bit too general to be helpful…

sabelmouse

it’s the benefit /risk ration that’s the problem
there’s still no ”anti” vax side.
there’s a vax safety side, and a
a vax side, and a
none vax side.
anti implies being against vaccination to the point of preventive people from doing it, the way pros want mandates.
it’s not that hard to understand.

The Bofa on the Sofa

it’s the benefit /risk ration that’s the problem

Exactly. For example, I’ve discussed the chicken pox benefit/risk ratio here many times. The short answer is that it’s so completely and ridiculously in favor of vaccination that anyone who does not vaccinate their children for the chicken pox are either complete morons or they are fucking monsters. If you actually do the benefit/risk analysis for the chicken pox, the only way you can come out against vaccine is if you have an anti-vax bias.

Yet, this is the one that most of those who you don’t like when we call them anti-vax will not get. Why not? It’s certainly not based on a benefit/risk analysis.

sabelmouse

except it isn’t.

The Bofa on the Sofa

Isn’t what? Isn’t based on risk/benefit analysis? I agree.

It’s based on assholery. Only a total asshole would subject their kids to chicken pox when there is a perfectly good vaccine alternative.

Azuran

No, the risk/benefits ratio is not a problem.
It’s probably the best ratio there is out there. Vaccines are the safest medical procedure there is.
If you think vaccines aren’t safe enough, then you shouldn’t ever drive a car, because it it infinitely more risky than vaccines.
I hope you don’t have a pool either, because the risk of kids drowning is MUCH higher than the risk of vaccine.
You better not have a dog, because the risk of bite or even getting killed by it it also higher than the risks of vaccination.
Never teach your kid to ride a bike.
Never, ever accept for your kid to be put under general anaesthesia, and surgery is even worst.
Never give them any kind of medication for that matter.
If you live in the USA, I sure hope you home-school your kids, because their risks of being killed in a school shooting is just way to high.
Actually, you shouldn’t let them go out at all, because they could get hit by a car.
Probably shouldn’t let them stay in a house either, way too much risks of them dying in a house fire.

If you think that vaccines are not safe enough, you really have nothing but a hopeless idiot. Vaccines are safer than almost anything you can come up with, and they have enormous benefits. Even with all the money in the world, vaccines could hardly every become significantly safer than they are not.
You are wrong, plain and simple.

momofone

People who make claims and refuse to back them up with credible sources also discredit themselves.

Eyes on the prize, sabelmouse. Whatever you call yourself, you don’t think people should vaccinate, and you have absolutely zero evidence backing up your claims or stance. Your ability to move goalposts is impressive, I admit, but you should really stop.

Yes, just facts. That’s what I’ve been asking for repeatedly, and what you have repeatedly failed to provide. Are we working on our parroting skills now?

Box of Salt

No, sabelmouse – when you spend as much time as you do on the internet arguing against the use of vaccines, you have earned the label “anti-vaccine” whether you want it or not.

If you don’t like the label, change your behavior.

sabelmouse

utter nonsense!
typical propagandist.

momofone

Still waiting on those numbers. 🙂

sabelmouse

what can one say to such stupidity?

Charybdis

You somehow keep finding words….

Nick Sanders

Except you don’t just not vaccinate, you spend a good deal of time making arguments against anybody else doing so either.

So, the possibilities are that you’re the one who doesn’t understand definitions, or you’re a lying sack of shit. Personally, I think it’s the latter.

momofone

Correct them then.

Nick Sanders

Especially given how many thousands got measles every year.

shay simmons

Of course you don’t want to talk about incidence, because it didn’t drop until vaccines were introduced.

Nick Sanders

Fuck off already.

sabelmouse

you could always block me.

Nick Sanders

But that doesn’t actually make you stop spewing your dangerous idiocy, it just keeps me from seeing it.

sabelmouse

it’s vv restful.

shay simmons

And it’s totes ok with you to add VPDs to the list of things that might kill people in 3rd world countries?

Humanitarian of the year.

JGC

Was Roald Dahl’s daughter malnourished? Are the United States located in a 3rd world country?

shay simmons

So because they’re malnourished and their health is compromised and they live in 3rd world countries, they deserve to die?

sabelmouse

shows what sheeple people really are that they NEVER even wonder about the outcomes.

Empress of the Iguana People

Like the one where I was sick for days and lost half my hearing to a common childhood illness?

sabelmouse

sick for days! wow!!!
i was that sick from the smallpox vaccine and now have an autoimmune disease.

momofone

Did you miss the part where she lost her hearing?

MI Dawn

Oh, Joy. sabelmouse has arrived. What’s the matter? Tired of getting your rear handed to you on SBM, sabelmouse? Note that many of the commenters here also comment on SBM.

So, sabelmouse – how old are you that you got the smallpox vaccine? What country did you live in at the time? How old were you when you acquired the autoimmune disease (I assume you are aware that they occur more frequently the older you get?)

MaineJen

But can you still hear out of both ears?

sabelmouse

one is damaged from an ear infection. i have issues as well as sensitivity to high pitched noises.

Proponent

Like that of the shrillness of your posts/comments, Saba?

critter8875

Maybe you’re allergic to Wi-Fi.

MaineJen

Do NOT give her ideas.

sabelmouse

???

momofone

She definitely has a reaction to logic.

Mike Stevens

“I have issues”
And don’t we all know it.

Charybdis

I don’t see how she can, with her head imbedded so far up her ass…

Charybdis

Well, I had the smallpox vaccine (Mom insisted) and I DON’T have an autoimmune disease. So mine trumps yours, as far as I’m concerned.
I did however, have chickenpox, a bad case and now I have had shingles twice. I’m too young for the shingles vaccine, so I just get to suffer. The last bout of shingles also developed a lovely secondary staph skin infection on top of the shingles rash.
So no. I am not pleased that I got chickenpox immunity the “old fashioned way”, nor do I believe that it is somehow “better” than immunity conferred by the vaccine. It is worse, because I now have the dormant virus lurking in my nerve endings, just waiting for a chance to ambush me. Fun times, that.

Empress of the Iguana People

I was born the year smallpox was eradicated. The vaccine is highly unlikely to have caused your autoimmune disease. Which, by the way, is usually your immune system overworking

sabelmouse

superfluous.

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

If only we could kill the millions of people whose lives were saved by smallpox vaccination and eradication, all so you wouldn’t have ever gotten that dirty, sick-making poison! If only we could take it all back!

FallsAngel

Some of them wouldn’t even be here posting.

sabelmouse

if only you could develop past a teen arguing with parents.

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

If only your body wasn’t a defective mess that obviously should’ve been written off and thrown in a dumpster at birth, like all those brown people, right?

sabelmouse

i can finally understand what teachers face in a classroom of teens.

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

On the bright side, most of those teens are vaccinated!

Who?

Perhaps that’s what she means-confronted by a group of healthy energetic, vaccinated people.

Probably a different crowd to the one she usually mixes with.

sabelmouse

explains a lot.

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

Like why they aren’t getting vaccine-prevented diseases?

momofone

Ooh, do tell. What exactly does it explain?

Roadstergal

Why they’re not dead/scarred/months behind on their work?

Empress of the Iguana People

No, you don’t.

The Computer Ate My Nym

What evidence do you have to connect the autoimmune disease to the vaccine? I mean, I went swimming when I was 5 and now I’m nearsighted, but I don’t claim that swimming causes nearsightedness.

sabelmouse

strawstrawstrawstraw straw, to the melody of carl poppa.

Roadstergal

So no evidence at all. Not that we’re surprised, we just like to check in with that every so often.

sabelmouse

the bsmed/ob/skeprap hive mind?

The Computer Ate My Nym

So, that would be “I have no evidence and am going to fling random accusations around in the hopes that no one notices” then? At least explain why you think the argument was “straw”.

sabelmouse

you know there’s only shill nyms here, right?

kfunk937

i was that sick from the smallpox vaccine and now have an autoimmune disease.

i never expected it to pay that well, and i’m sure that you have living expenses.
else you’re handling your finances badly.
maybe shouldn’t have accrued all that debt?

rosewater1

So…because we’re “shills”, we have no right to this magical life saving information that you have. Got it. Oh, and when you talk to Shill Central, I only need about $5000 to get debt free. Tell them I’m disappointed in their tardiness.

Heidi_storage

Aaaaaand again. You don’t get to make assertions without being prepared to back them up!

rosewater1

Stop talking about yourself. YOU are the one who’s not here to learn anything.

Heidi_storage

I’m afraid this is another deduction; the person making the claim has the burden of providing evidence to back up said claim.

sabelmouse

why would i care. i’m only replying to the hive mind for entertainment.

Mike Stevens

In other words, you admit you are just trolling.

rosewater1

Try reading a book. Much more entertaining.

sabelmouse

i do that at night.

shay simmons

Sabel, as usual, has nothing.

Mike Stevens

Commonest trigger of autoimmune disease is infection.
Vaccination will help prevent that.

JGC

If you’re implying that the autoimmune disease was caused by the vaccine, by what argument? Surely you understand that “after” isn’t synonymous with “because of”.

sabelmouse

no.
yes.

JGC

Why then did you append the part about now having an autoimmune disease to your post? If you’re not implying cause and effect it’s a non sequitor.

sabelmouse

seriously? think!

JGC

If it was not to imply the smallpox vaccine caused your autoimmune disease I have no idea. Why don’t you tell me?

sabelmouse

i did imply that. you asked me if it’s a given that correlation is causation, i said no.
2 different questions dear what logic evades you.
i’m amazed you even post outside the hive mind.

JGC

what has led you to believe the reaction to the vaccine caused your autoimmune disorder(if, that is, it’s anything other than a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy?

i guess we know why you don’t understand differences in questions, and answers.

momofone

Please, explain it for us.

Mike Stevens

…And I had a smallpox vaccine and now have a car.

Linden

Wow, me too! Darn Big Pharma, in cahoots with Big Auto.

Roadstergal

I got a promotion shortly after my most recent diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis booster.

Mike Stevens

And my daughter started to walk just after her first MMR.
In fact I bet most people’s kids started to walk within weeks of the MMR vax – so what’s that all about, huh? …Solid, undeniable and incontrovertible proof that vaccination stimulates neurodevelopment, I’d say.

Nick Sanders

Don’t you have baby killers to be defending somewhere?

sabelmouse

like the once who did in that recent measles epidemic?

Nick Sanders

Like the ones who shake shake their baby to death then blame it on vaccines.

Also, the measles epidemic has hospitalized tons of people.

sabelmouse

L O L!

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

Yeah, child abuse is real funny, ain’t it, sabelmouse?

Heidi_storage

Ooh, I’m going to have to deduct some points for use of the cliche “sheeple.”

momofone

I think we’re going to have to count off for mention of shills too.

shay simmons

Outcomes from measles? How about 1 in 4 being hospitalized?

Why am I not surprised that nrbrk got the only upvote from you, sabel.

DaisyGrrl

Of the children that recover “fine” in a week or so, they still face health risks directly relating to having had measles.

While the mortality rate from measles is not necessarily that high in developed countries, it is still a deadly disease that can have significant health consequences for those who fall ill.

The Bofa on the Sofa

Of the children that recover “fine” in a week or so, they still face health risks directly relating to having had measles.

And they still had the fucking measles for a weak.

I guess torturing someone is also ok, too, because, you know, they get over it eventually.

I have said it before, I don’t care if the disease kills you, or even causes permanent damage. It still sucks, and if you can easily avoid it, why wouldn’t you do that?

DaisyGrrl

Agreed 100%. I just hate the narrative that measles are a “minor” illness because they completely fucking aren’t.
I agree that avoiding illness through vaccination is (and should be) enough in and of itself.

mabelcruet

My sister got measles as a child back in the early 70s (I didn’t, no idea why not, we shared a bedroom so in fairly close proximity). I was absolutely terrified-she had febrile convulsions, she was hallucinating having wakeful nightmares, she was crying endlessly in pain because an ear got infected as well and ruptured her ear drum. She didn’t eat for a week, she was listless and exhausted for weeks afterwards. The GP visited a few times but she wasn’t admitted to hospital, and mum nursed her day and night trying to get her to drink, leaving her exhausted too.

It’s not a benign illness, its not just a mild fever that leaves you a little snuffly, it’s awful and dangerous and kills. My sister eventually recovered, but she wasn’t herself for ages afterwards.

Empress of the Iguana People

My husband’s still blind from congenital german measles. Prat.

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

No, no, he has natural immunity from sightedness. Easy mistake!

Linden

This made me laugh a bitter, bitter laugh. No offence meant to EotIP.
You’ve got to laugh at the callousness and ignorance of people, or you wouldn’t stop crying.

Empress of the Iguana People

No worries. We tell blind jokes all the time; my sweetie is generally pretty easy-going about it. I actually forget that he has so little sight on a regular basis, which he thinks is adorable, even after 20 years, lol

nrbrk

There are literally THOUSANDS of diseases. Yet the only diseases we fear are the ones that a vaccine has been developed and marketed for.

We only started fearing measles and mumps in the early 20th century—because the media told us to.

The majority of the things you’ve listed, we DON’T have vaccines for. And yes, they are scary. However a lot of those things are ALSO bacterial infections which we can clear up with a course of antibiotics. Or in the case of candida, an antifungal.

Also, governments are beginning to acknowledge that chickenpox isn’t so mild. Here in NZ, the vaccine for it will now be given FREE to any child under 11 years of age.

The Bofa on the Sofa

The chicken pox CAN be mild. But you know what’s milder?

The vaccine.

It’s also cheaper if you consider lost time due to having a child home sick for 10 days.

Of course, if you assume once again that mother’s time is worth nothing, then it might be close.

shay simmons

We don’t have a vaccine for chickenpox? Really?

JGC

I guess the existence of Merck’s Zostavax is a shared delusion.

FallsAngel

Or anthrax, or bacterial pneumonia 39 types?

shay simmons

Yep, I saw that. The spousal unit got the the anthrax vaccine, as I think I’ve mentioned before. Still waiting for him to develop the webbed feet and the third eye.

The Computer Ate My Nym

Technically, the meme says “we are not vaccinated against…” and most of us are not vaccinated against anthrax since it’s given only in specific situations where there is high risk of exposure. Almost as if physicians cared about the risk versus benefit ratio of a treatment and tried to give it only when it had the greatest benefit and least risk.

Young CC Prof

These memes go round and round the antivax community and no one notices that the information is decades out of date. It’s pretty funny if you read it.

shay simmons

These memes go round and round the antivax community and no one notices, all of them ignore the fact that the information is decades out of date.

Even when they’ve been shown the evidence umpteen times.

AnnaPDE

Clearly, no one is concerned about Ebola, West Nile virus, Zika virus, and any number of other awful diseases because
a) there’s no vaccine against them, and
b) they’re too far along in the alphabet.
Yeah no. This post of yours might take the “stupid of the day” crown.

The Bofa on the Sofa

Clearly, no one is concerned about Ebola, West Nile virus, Zika virus, and any number of other awful diseases because
a) there’s no vaccine against them, and
b) they’re too far along in the alphabet.

Oh, I don’t think my parents were scared of mumps because of the media. I think my parents were scared of mumps because 18 months old me got it while we were visiting relatives in south Italy. 40°C outside, 40°C of fever, no “real” doctor available, only a “witch” doctor. But hey, it can’t have been so bad as I survived unharmed, probably saved by the witch doctor. And yet, when my brother was born some years later and a vaccine against mumps was available, they got him vaccinated asap. Why, oh why did they do it, when a witch can heal it?

Roadstergal

“Yet the only diseases we fear are the ones that a vaccine has been developed and marketed for.”

It’s almost as if the most feared diseases were the highest-priority targets for vaccine development…

We aren’t vaccinated against HIV/AIDS (which is one disease- AIDS is caused by HIV which stands for human immunodeficiency virus) because it mutates really fast so we don’t have one. People have been working on that for 20-30 years now, we just haven’t succeeded at making one.

We focused on getting the most easily transmitted, deadliest diseases first. That’s why measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (whooping cough) were some of the earliest vaccines. They killed the most people and spread the easiest. We’re still working on vaccines for a lot of mosquito-borne viruses- West Nile, Zika, malaria (we sort of have one, but people don’t develop lifelong immunity to malaria and the parasite that causes it is rather sneaky), and yellow fever are all high on the priority list. Ebola became a high priority after the big outbreak, and we might actually have a vaccine for that now too. Initial trials are very promising.

My grandparents grew up before vaccines. One grandmother was quarantined for scarlet fever- she remembers the big chalk X on her door, and neither she nor her family was allowed to leave the house for weeks. They had someone from the local grocery dropped off food on their doorstep- she remembers him fleeing after dropping it on the lowest step furthest from the door. We don’t have a vaccine for scarlet fever either, even though it’s pretty scary. But all four grandparents remember being scared of all those diseases (except smallpox, which had been eradicated from the US before they were born). The media didn’t teach us to be scared of them- we are scared of them because they are scary. Measles still kills over 180,000 children a year, mostly in developing nations where the vaccine isn’t available.

There are THOUSANDS of diseases (actually many millions), but most of them won’t kill or maim you, and of the ones that can, most of them you are unlikely to get because they don’t spread easily. The ones that are deadly and easily spread we have tried to find vaccines for first. But have you ever read “Little Women”? They were terrified of all kinds of diseases and for good reason. They didn’t need media to tell them what could kill them (and what wound up killing one of them).

The Bofa on the Sofa

Yet the only diseases we fear are the ones that a vaccine has been developed and marketed for.

I have been begging for a hand/foot/mouth disease vaccine ever since my kids got it. So you can take your “we” strawman and shove it up your pooper.

N

Me too. Hand mouth foot, and stomatitis. They really suck.

MaineJen

Oh my god, what I wouldn’t give for a Norovirus vaccine. That stuff is miserable.

MaineJen

You don’t have to go more than 2 generations back in my family to find people dying of pertussis (3 years old) and diphtheria (20 years old). In America. People were plenty afraid of measles and polio back in the day.

I’m not a bit afraid of these diseases…because I and my children have been vaccinated. I’m afraid for people in other countries who don’t have access to vaccines, and I’m afraid for the children of anti-vaxxers who will suffer compromised health as a result of suffering from measles and pertussis.

Amazed

“We”? Take it and shove it.

Don’t you DARE lump me together with you and the rest of you disease vectors. Me OR my great-grandparents who lost one child to diphteria and got the luch of another one, my grandmother, recovering. She still remembers these days with zero gratitude for this chance to acquire all natural immunity. Her 5 pound baby was vaccinated against everything under the sun.

Azuran

Or, you know, we developed vaccines for the most dangerous diseases first.

Azuran

So we didn’t make vaccines for everything…….and that proves what exactly?
If anything, that means that the medical community will actually look at the data and find out for which disease it is worth it to make a vaccine. So big Pharma isn’t trying to push unnecessary vaccines just to make money.

And vaccines are not magical. They generally work fine with viruses. But with bacteria they don’t work well and need boosters way too often (Natural immunity from bacteria infection isn’t great either, BTW). So it’s not worth it.
As for fungus or parasites, it’s even worst.

Also, there is a vaccine for chickenpox, we are trying hard to make a vaccine for AIDS/HIV, and there is a vaccine for anthrax.

Seems like someone is just not as educated as he thinks he is.

The Computer Ate My Nym

Actually, there is a VZV vaccine. It’s quite effective and long lasting immunity has been documented. Not to mention that it eliminates the risk of shingles later in life.

HIV vaccines have been tested, so far none have worked out. Also note that none are on the market. Almost as though regulatory agencies and maybe even Big Pharma care about efficacy and safety and don’t just allow any old thing on the market. At least for drugs and vaccines. Supplements now…that’s a different story, at least in the US, thankyouverymuchsenatorhatch.

Empress of the Iguana People

Or are THEY just pretending when THEY gave my daughter the chicken pox “vaccine” 2 weeks ago. She was fine after a few minutes of hysterical crying (which she was also doing when the nurse measured her)

Charybdis

Pre-emptive vaccine injury?
/sarcasm

Nick Sanders

Funny, last I checked people were afraid of HIV, anthrax, babesiosis, botulism, bacterial pneumonia, and norovirus. And that’s just here in a first world nation. Chagas scares me enough that I never ever want to go anywhere near any place it is even thought to be endemic. Sleeping sickness is also pretty scary, but at least it’s much, much farther away.

kilda

It’s kind of hilarious that the poster thinks no one is afraid of HIV or anthrax. I’m sure Ebola would be on that list too except he/she got bored before they got that far into the alphabet. Nope, no one fears HIV or anthrax.

And most of us in the US aren’t all that afraid of African sleeping sickness or Argentine, Bolivian, or Brazilian hemorrhagic fever, because, duh, we do not live in Africa, Argentina, Bolivia or Brazil.

Jonathan Graham

We only started fearing measles and mumps in the early 20th century

Why would that ever be a useful standard to judge anything? People have not feared things they should have all throughout history.

FallsAngel

Plus it’s untrue! Several times now I’ve posted a quote from a New Jersey farmer in 1759, referring to measles as the “avenging angel”. If I weren’t on my phone I’d quote it again. Interested parties can search my posts.

Roadstergal

Measles killed King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamamalu of Hawaii on their first journey to Europe. Their ‘organic,’ outdoorsy, GMO-free, vaccine-free lifestyle helped them not a bit.

Measles later swept the islands, along with whooping cough; records are not reliable, but the population was literally decimated across about two years (roughly 10% lower at the end of the epidemic). You won’t find the Hawaiians at that point to be blasé about measles.

Heidi_storage

It’s so nice to hear both “literally” and “decimated” used correctly…though of course that was an awful thing to happen to the Hawaiians.

Nick Sanders

I’m fine with people using “literally” to exaggerate their statements, because hyperbole is a valid rhetorical device. “Decimate” in place of “devastate” drives me crazy though, because they are understating the effects when they are trying to convey something really severe.

Jonathan Graham

I suspect that, like anything forces conspired to create a wide variety of opinion. As medical science and hygiene improved – deaths – probably the hardest outcome to ignore – became less common. Couple that with the fact that information wasn’t anywhere near as available as it is today. I suspect that even by the 1920’s it was possible to grow up sufficiently isolated to think that measles wasn’t a big deal.

IIRC I was reading some of the letters of Robert E. Howard (the creator of Conan) who caught the measles and had to drop out of bookkeeping school temporarily. In one of his letters he talks both about people trying to avoid the measles as well as people going out of their way to get it. This was in an age where thousands were still dying every year.

nrbrk

HERD IMMUNITY?

“Nearly every year, there are outbreaks of infectious diseases in the U.S. in which the communities involved were highly vaccinated and, thus, supposedly immune.

The theory of herd immunity was never meant to be applied to a vaccinated population, but rather was co-opted later in the 20th century to help justify mass, mandatory vaccination campaigns to eliminate infectious diseases for the so-called “greater good.”

Consequently, a vaccinated herd is never really protected. There is an illusion of protection in such a scenario because those who have been vaccinated remain vulnerable to infection and, thus, so does the herd—vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.”

Just because there are MORE cases in vaccinated individuals, does not mean that PROPORTIONATELY more vaccinated people caught the illness.

Let’s work with some small, easy numbers so I don’t overload your tiny brain, okay?

So, say we have a population of 100 people. In that population, we have say 2 people who are medically fragile and cannot be vaccinated. Now, if the recommended 95% of people are vaccinated, then the odds of those 2 coming into contact with the disease are low.

Now, say instead that in our 100, 80 people are vaccinated (80%). Of the 20 remaining, 2 are those medically fragile from before, and the other 18 are unvaccinated for whatever reasons.

A measles outbreak occurs. Now, after it’s run its course, it’s found that there were say 78 cases. 18 were in the unvaccinated population, 60 in the vaccinated.

This is where the math comes in. Yes, more vaccinated people caught it, but more people were vaccinated for it. However in the individual populations (vaccinated/unvaccinated) this is how it works:

Vaccinated = 60 people out of 80 = 75%

Unvaccinated = 18 people out of 20 = 90%

So PROPORTIONATELY, in those populations, MORE unvaccinated people caught the disease, than those who had received immunizations.

And why vaccinated people still caught it?

1) The unvaccinated population gave the disease more of a foothold in the community and more chances to spread.

2) Vaccines are MOSTLY effective, but unfortunately there are still some people who, despite having the vaccinations, still don’t produce the antibodies to create immunity.

So there you go, learn to math and risk assess, THEN come back here. Also, I think it’s disgusting that you’re using Einstein as your profile picture when he was a man of science and you, you schmuck, clearly are not.

shay simmons

I guess that’s why unvaccinated children are 35x more likely to get the measles when exposed.

Would you like to try and point out WHY you believe this article is, as you so eloquently put it. BS?

Catching the disease to gain immunity from it is the BS. Vaccines have minor side effects, as opposed to the life-altering/potentially fatal complications that occur from a ‘natural’ infection.

Here’s a SIMPLE example.

Chance of vaccine-induced encephalitis from the MMR vaccine: 1:1,000,000

Chance of encephalitis from exposure to actual measles: 1:1000.

Which one has the higher chance of happening?

The Bofa on the Sofa

One thing you need to add to this comparison is that, without vaccine, pretty much everyone will catch the measles.

This is a case where anti-vaxxers want to eat their cake and have it, too. Oh, they claim, the chance of catching the measles is small, so that 1/1000 doesn’t mean anything.

Of course, the only reason the chance of catching measles is small is because people like ME vaccinate and have our kids vaccinated. If everyone stopped vaccinating, everyone would catch the measles.

They fail to recognize that. Well, not all. Bob Sears, for example, knows darn well that his anti-vax patients need people like me to sacrifice our kids through vaccination to protect their snowflakes.

Amy Tuteur, MD

Apparently you’re not capable of rebutting it, though.

shay simmons

Channeling Yoda, are we?

TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsYoya

I’m pretty sure a large proportion of antivaxxers believe that if you survive smallpox you will pass this immunity on to your children.

kilda

I’m pretty sure a large proportion of them think that as long as you wash your hands regularly and eat organic food, you’ll never get smallpox.

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

Don’t forget weekly chiropractic adjustments, essential oils, and homeopathy! And have you seen the wonderful crystals you can get on Amazon??

poppy72

Gee Ken, you forgot “Reiki” again. Must fix those “chakras”

MaineJen

Reiki: I’m not even going to touch you! I’m just going to put my hands *near* you for half an hour!…..That’ll be $100.

N

I can beat that. My mother went to a “wonder healer”. You go to see him, tell him your story and leave him a picture of you. He will heal you in the following days/weeks, only by looking at your picture. 250 €.

Roadstergal

It’s the woo of choice for germophobes and those with restraining orders.

The Computer Ate My Nym

Technically, it’s true that if you wash your hands regularly and eat organic food you’ll never get smallpox. It’s also true that if you never wash again and eat nothing but fritos you’ll never get smallpox–it’s extinct in the wild! The only way you can get smallpox today is a lab accident or act of bioterrorism.

FallsAngel

Yes, many of them think Immunity is heritable. When you point out there’d be no disease in a couple of generations if that were so, well, they have some other answer, of course.

Who?

Or that tetanus is contagious.

Sometimes the stupid really does burn.

Clorinda

I have been watching a friend progress down the trail towards becoming a full-blown anti-vaxxer. She started with just a video and what looked like an honest question. Somebody had linked something for her. So several of us responded honestly with links and rebuttals to the content. She was resistant then but still claimed to be open. She wanted to see both sides. But the longer the conversation went, and the more she posted and reposted from the fake science and health sites, the less willing she was to even discuss it despite her claims to the contrary.

This past week, she has been posting about the Amish, about vaccine injury stories and declaring she respects everybody’s opinion but she knows the truth now. From the first I was aware of her posting things til now only took a few months. Although, some of her other forays into woo started earlier, so she was likely primed already.

Poogles

I’ve been watching my husband’s bandmate and the bandmate’s fiancé fall farther and farther down the rabbit hole of woo. When my husband first started jamming with him, him and his fiancé were both kind of new-agey and she was a pescatarian (vegetarian who still eats fish), but nothing too crazy. Now here we are a few years later and they are both hardcore vegan, anti-vaxx, big believers in “The Secret”, believers in a few different conspiracy theories and – their latest woo belief – FLAT-EARTHERS. *headdesk*
I have literally been afraid for them to hear about “Breatharianism” because there doesn’t seem to be any woo belief too crazy for them to fall for and I’d rather not watch them starve themselves to death believing they can live on sunlight and air…

Charybdis

I thought it was on the “energy of the universe”.
To quote Po from Kung Fu Panda: “Its going to take more than dew and, uh, universe juice”.

Sue

OT: breaking news in Aus
Midwife Lisa Barrett charged with manslaughter over deaths of two babies following homebirths

Most likely this is a complicated case and getting enough evidence to prosecute is hard. Especially since this is a criminal investigation and not a malpractice one. It’s probably a very grey area of legality. Homebirth is legal, pregnant women have 100% the right to refuse to be followed by a doctor and have anyone they want assist them during the birth.
So basically, you have to prove that she knowingly and willingly lied to patient about their risks so they would stay with her, that she knowingly ignored and hid complications during the birth, and that her actions are directly responsible to the death of the baby.
A good portion of their case seems to hinge on the fact that she did a lot of cover up, told parents to stay silent, tried to destroy evidence etc, which proves that she knew what she was doing was dangerous, but persisted anyway.

And since you can only prosecute once, you want to be sure you can win.

Dr Kitty

Well, something has changed that appears to make a conviction more likely.

Possibly co-operation of witnesses who had previously protected Barrett. The fact that the identity of the second baby is protected means that it is possible that the family may be acting as witnesses for the prosecution and the secrecy is to protect them from abuse by her supporters. But that is a guess on my part.

Phone taps are mentioned in that story, so it may be evidence gathered in recent years through that route has swayed the balance towards a conviction being more likely.

Just remember- these are the babies born alive who died.
There are stillbirths and disabled babies she is also responsible for.

Sue

Not to mention this fact: the immune response to a vaccine antigen is the same, natural, immune response as what is mounted when invaded by the micro-organism itself – expect that one generally doesn’t have to survive the disease to develop the immune response. Isn’t science wonderful?

DaisyGrrl

Wakefield and Adams also appear to have forgotten that there are diseases out there with near 100% fatality.

Fun story time:
My dog killed a raccoon last night (surprise encounter in my back yard, very young raccoon, large dog). Raccoons are reservoir species for rabies where I live, so I had a full day of dealing with the fall-out today. My dog went to the vet (miraculously without a scratch on him that we could find), I went to the doctor (cleaned up blood from dog without gloves and have a couple of scabbed-over wounds on my hands from other fun), TWO government agencies were notified, one of which will test the raccoon. Since my dog was already vaxxed, no unusual behavior was noted in either animal prior to the attack, and it’s been years since a raccoon tested positive in these parts, the end result is that the dog just needs to be watched until the testing results come back and I don’t need post-exposure treatment unless the test comes back positive.

All that for a relatively low-risk encounter. And you know what? If there had been even a hint that additional vaccination was required for me or my dog, I wouldn’t have hesitated BECAUSE RABIES IS ALMOST UNIVERSALLY FATAL ONCE SYMPTOMS START.
/ end fun story time

So yeah, Wakefield or Adams may want to roll the dice on so-called natural immunity, but I suspect their level of loyalty to this position would correlate closely with the mortality rate of the disease.

And if they accept that it makes sense to vaccinate for some diseases (like frickin’ RABIES) then they accept that the decision to vaccinate for any diseases comes in large part from a risk/benefit analysis (which I got to see up close and personal today). Shockingly, such analyses are how we ended up with the vaccine schedules we know and love today.

Amy

But-but-but I thought the schedule of today was the result of out-of-control Big Pharma and a government in its thrall!

Even though vaccines are nowhere near the money-makers other drugs are for pharmaceutical companies.

DaisyGrrl

I know, right? There are a ton of vpds we don’t routinely vaccinate for, depending on where you live and other risk factors. This would not be the case if it was a Big Pharma conspiracy.

Steph858

Thought process of conspiracy-minded wooist:

There IS a cure for cancer/diabetes/the common cold: homeopathy/acupuncture/this herb. The catch is that these ‘cures’ work much better when taken for prevention, so take your sugar pills NOW, before it’s too late. The reason your doctor didn’t tell you about it is because Big Pharma don’t want you to know; it’s much more profitable to treat symptoms indefinitely than to sell a cheap preventative/cure that, since it treats the cause and not the symptoms, you only need to take on the odd occasion.

Vaccines are a scam! Why take dangerous chemicals to prevent contracting a disease when you could just treat the disease if and when you get it? Big Pharma makes too much money out of vaccines to admit they’re unnecessary, that’s the only reason your doctor recommends them.

I was hoping that we’d invent a vaccine for cancer and it would make the woos’ heads explode. But then Gardasil came along and the wooists just went their standard ‘vaccines are evil’ route with a side of ‘HPV doesn’t cause cancer’ denialism.

AnnaPDE

But but but… Didn’t you know that all the foxes and raccoons have become autistic because of the oral rabies vaccines that are administered to them via baits? That’s why they are shy and don’t come up to people any more like they used to. Not because losing shyness is an early rabies symptom or anything.

DaisyGrrl

And all the dogs and cats are autistic too! If your pet has behavioral problems, it’s from the vaccines and not from poor training, genetics, personality, etc.

StephanieJR

That explains my rabbit!

…nothing explains my rabbit. She is a law unto herself.

shay simmons

Are you sure she’s not a cat?

StephanieJR

I asked her, but she just begged for more food. I think she’s part dog, too.

kilda

It’s true. My dog hasn’t spoken a word since he got his shots.

StephanieJR

Rabies is terrifying; if there’s a zombie apocalypse, that’s what will cause it.

Box of Salt

I had the chicken pox as a child. I can look forward to maybe having shingles later in life. When I’m old enough, I will get the shingles vaccine to avoid it (hopefully).

My children had the vaccine. They have had confirmed exposure to the disease via a vaccine failure case at school. Guess what? They won’t need the shingles vaccine.

Box of Salt

I tried the riddle on my kids (now both officially middle schoolers). The younger one answered “on the border.” The older one answered “in cemetaries.” When I repeated the question, the older one responded that everyone dies eventually and they would still be buried in cemetaries – therefore the answer is still correct.

Maybe that one has a future in law . . . .

The Computer Ate My Nym

When I was a kid I tried that riddle on my mom. She suggested that if you were a nice person you’d bury them somewhere that they could easily get out of.

Zornorph

Makes me think of that crazy woman who let her child suffer with whooping cough for months so she’d get natural immunity. And never have to get whooping cough!

That psycho lives in my area of the world. I hope my call to CPS based on her blog was one of the reasons she pulled her blog post.

I used her as the example of why I was glad my micro-preemie son had two doses of DTaP before he left the NICU – and the reason I scheduled his third dose on the day after he turned 6 months actual age.

It was children. Multiple children. And the kids were getting in descending age order moving closer and closer to her 9 month old infant.

Fucking psychopath.

Sue

Exactly. Not very logical to get the infection in order to avoid getting the infection. And immunity following full pertussis infection isn’t long-lasting anyway – it’s about the same as the vaccine.

Ken S., As Seen On Watch Lists

As I paraphrase it, “remember when everybody was really healthy, and you could tell because everybody got sick all the time?”

Roadstergal

And she (the crazy mom) didn’t get whooping cough, right? So the vaccine she got as a little girl was still effective…

Empress of the Iguana People

Typhoid Mary had quite a robust immune system, too. Of course, she was a very unusual case, but they eventually locked her up because she was always passing on a really dangerous disease. Sure, many people survived it.

Amy

I just looked up her bio. Holy crap, she sounds identical to some of the woo-peddlers today! Since SHE didn’t understand the importance of hand-washing before cooking food (her job!!!), she ignored the authorities and went so far as to use aliases in order to keep working as a cook.

critter8875

My maternal grandmother was a typhoid carrier.
Born in Germany in the 1880s.
When it was found out, she did follow all the precautions.

Empress of the Iguana People

Egad! well, at least she did follow the precautions.

Madtowngirl

“There is only one kind of immunity…” I couldn’t even read Adams’ quote beyond that. Those seven words alone mean he knows nothing about immunology.

kilda

Thank you! This is the part I’ve never understood when they claim that natural immunity is superior. There’s just no logic to it.

The whole point of immunity is to not get the disease. That’s what we want immunity for, right? So what the hell good is immunity that requires you to get the disease? Their brilliant plan for avoiding measles is to get measles. (Substitute the VPD of your choice for measles here).

Ehteljturner

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AnnaPDE

Yes, this. My 18mo just had his MMRV shot 12 days ago and is currently having the expected “light version” type reaction — fever, cough, sore throat, runny/stuffy nose. It’s uncomfortable enough as it is (his reaction to fever over 38.5C is vomiting, and the ibuprofen wore off at 4am the last two nights… joy!), and I hate to think what the real thing would look like for him.

Empress of the Iguana People

Xactly. My 12 month old got her MMR and V shots last week. She’s been rubbing her nose a bit, but besides that she seems perfectly fine. 🙂

Mike Stevens

Better watch out. She may start walking within the next few weeks, It’s a frequent side effect of recent MMR vaccination.

Empress of the Iguana People

Probably not, though. We’re a family of early talkers and later walkers; big brother and dad walked at 14 months.

Heidi_storage

My oldest got a nasty fever with the MMR/V shots; we had a miserable two days. And then the fever was over, and my daughter now has (most probably) immunity to four diseases that can carry very serious, longterm consequences.

Mike Stevens

Some antivaxers realise their claim is quite laughable and illogical as it stands, so instead they pretend that it is vital mothers gain natural immunity because that protects the newborn babies better than artificial maternal immunity. That might be a valid side-line argument, but it isn’t true (with the exception that for measles transplacental immunity passively gained from naturally infected mothers lasts around 2 months longer than from vaccinated mothers). It doesn’t work for anything else much, and immunity from breast milk is trivial and unaffected by whether moms were vaxed or had the natural disease, since it is quite nonspecific in nature.

In fact, we recommend mothers have pertussis boosters in pregnancy, which is way more effective (at preventing infants getting pertussis) than relying on the immunity mothers got from natural infection in childhood themselves, which has almost always waned by the time they become pregnant.

MrsFre

My grandmother had her natural immunity to many childhood diseases wiped out by cancer treatments and had to be vaccinated once the treatment protocol was finished. Something tells me she is grateful she didn’t have to regain that natural immunity at 64 years old!

Madtowngirl

My sister is only 32, and she’s been undergoing treatment for UC – which suppresses her immune system. Shock, horror, I have made sure my family is up to date on our vaccines!

namaste863

Another point: YOU might get lucky and survive the disease, but what about those you pass it on to? Before the vaccine, for every one person who contracted polio, they could expect to infect 4 to 6 others. If you yourself survive the disease, it is entirely possible that any number of those you infect will not be so lucky. Getting vaccinated isn’t just saying “I refuse to get sick and possibly die.” It is also saying “I refuse to be a vector that spreads a disease that can get other people sick and possibly kill them.”

Amy Tuteur, MD

Dr. Amy Tuteur is an obstetrician gynecologist. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1979 and her medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine in 1984. Dr. Tuteur is a former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. She left the practice of medicine to raise her four children. Her book, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting (HarperCollins) was published in 2016. She can be reached at DrAmy5 at aol dot com...
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